Monday, March 20, 2023

The Operation by Dylan Young

 


374 pages


You can buy The Operation...Here
You can follow Dylan Young...Here

  • The Blurb...
Surgeon Jacob Thorn isn’t worried when the police interview him over nurse Katy Leith’s disappearance. She is a co-worker, nothing more. But when a leaked video of an argument between him and the missing woman goes viral, the social media reaction is vicious.

When harrowing images of the kidnapped woman start to appear on his phone, along with a demand from her abductor that Jake confess to a crime he has no recollection of committing, he is forced to act or face terrifying consequences. He needs to delve into the past for answers. But time is running out for Katy. Will he admit to his failings and lose everything, or plead ignorance and let an innocent girl die?

  • Our Review...
An interesting mystery thriller set in the medical world of a top consultant surgeon. It asks several moral questions for instance should a surgeon  admit to serious failings to save an innocent life even if those serious failings may not be true?  Is his reputation worth a human life.

It also raises the lid on the more general murky world of medical ethics. Surgeons must learn their trade. Therefore there will be errors. Do we punish the surgeons for the errors? If we did there would be no more surgeons, so leniency is the order of the day. But what then of the bereaved families of medical collateral damage, do we explain their deaths as down to rookie errors? It's an ill wind that blows no one any good. 

The plot itself focuses on Jake Thorn (now there's a protagonist's name if ever I saw one. No heroes are called Dave Smith are or Mike Jones are they?) A confident borderline over bearing Surgeon but deep down a nice guy. Trapped in a loveless relationship. A random colleague is kidnapped, the police are sniffing round him as he was the last person to see her alive. When out of the blue he starts to receive texts instructing him to confess to a case of criminal negligence from way back in his past. What is he going to do?

The author also focuses on the cesspit that is social media. The words witch-hunt and feeding frenzy spring to mind. You don't even have to be guilty of anything to be the victim of a world full of virtual schoolyard bullies.

The author does a nice line in two or three line hits that frame the issue at hand perfectly. see selected quotes for a few examples

The plot is entertaining and twisty enough to keep you nibbling away at the line, like a salmon nudging a fly. The reveal is well hidden and interesting. I wouldn't read it if I were about to go in for an operation mind you.

A good, solid, enticing medical thriller.

  • Selected Quotes...
Crime is like medicine. Alcohol is a major contributor to workloads in both.'

She might even have been one of these kids who's had a boob job. Personally, I think it's criminal to even offer it at that age, but then I'm not raking it in as a plastic surgeon. Amazing what the filthy lucre does to ethics.

Now we have targets to meet. Budgets to not overspend. Drugs to invent and make profits from.

'The press is one thing. Social media and its power is something else altogether. Don't underestimate the great unwashed, Mr Thorn. To them, you are already a monster. McCarthyism is alive and well and hiding in the web.

We all, as surgeons and physicians, have our own horror stories to tell. Our secret drawer where we keep things buried. And any medic who tells you differently is a liar.

  • If You Liked This Then You May Like...
The Citadel by AJ Cronin  
(on the corruption of the medical profession prior to the War. Sad to see that in some ways we have not moved on, indeed it would appear that those times and issues are returnin)

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides 
review...Here

Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer


  • About The Author...
I grew up in a mining village in South Wales. Left for university in London at 18 and a career in the NHS. I started writing seriously when I was about 33 and produced three dark psychological thrillers for Random House in the late nineties.  Over the last decade and a half I’ve dabbled in children’s books and an adult contemporary fantasy series, only to turn back to crime. 3 DI Anne Gwynne novels followed with Bookouture. The Appointment  and The Operation, standalone psychological thrillers  are published by Bloodhound Books. Trauma was published in December 2020. I’m still practising medicine. (from Crime Cymru)

Friday, March 3, 2023

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

 



320 Pages

You can buy The Murder of Roger Ackroyd...Here
You can read about Agatha Christie...Here

  • The Blurb...

Mrs Farrars is found dead of an apparent overdose one year after the death of her husband. The villagers of King's Abbot are suspicious. The rumour is that she poisoned her husband and was in love with Roger Ackroyd. When he is found murdered the following day, there is little to go on.

Luckily one of the newest residents who has retired to this normally quiet village is none other than Monsieur Hercule Poirot.


  • Our Review..
I decided to read this after hearing in a podcast that TMORA  is one of Christie's classic mysteries in that it has a conclusion that comes out the blue and knocks you sideways similar to her other belters "Murder On The Orient Express" and "And Then There Were None." If you have read them or seen the film/tv adaptions then you will know what I men. No spoilers. I throughly enjoyed reading both those novels and yes I failed to spot the culprit(s) 

Now I'm one of them. Yes I'm the guy who spots the wrong un well before the end. Sadly, I actually pride myself on it. Very rarely do I fail to pick out the killer hidden in plain sight. So I then I'm up for the challenge. Agatha isn't going to do me three times in a row.

The book opens with the news that Poirot has retired to grow marrows in the hamlet of King's Abbot. He is missing his former confidante and scribe Hastings. However his neighbour is the local GP Dr Sheppard. They quickly become friends. The good Dr becomes Poirot's new sidekick. Poirot is requested to enter the fray one more time. Together they investigate the murder of local bigwig Roger Ackroyd who has been literally stabbed in the back.

There are numerous potential perps and most have means, motive and opportunity. Is this Poirot's final case also his toughest?

The task of the crime writer is a hard and complex one. To plan a murder and then devise and leave all the clues visible but to then obfuscate and camouflage them to such an exponential degree that they cannot be seen even in plain sight. Then find a way to unravel the thread that connects them all in sequence. There is a reason why Christie is the greatest selling novelist of all time. She is a genius at it. More magician than writer. When the culprit is revealed and taken back through the timeline, you are left slapping your head and giving your best Homer Simpson! D'oh! Of course how did I not see it all along.

 The prose is very Christie like way, all middle class, servants, gossips and ner-do-wells. I found myself relaxing into the comfortable words and rhythm  like a favourite, comfy armchair. Even if I had actually worked out who the killer was, it would still have been a very good book. The fact that she had done me again just elevates it a little. It just came out of nowhere and yet was so logical. Well played again Agatha. It was first published 97 years ago and it's still a great sucker punch.

Really good book, with a great reveal.

  • Selected Quotes...
"Ackroyd was sitting as I had left him in the armchair before the fire. His head had fallen sideways, and clearly visible, just below the collar of his coat, was a shining piece of twisted metalwork."

"Not mentally responsible. That’s the line to take, clearly. I read only the other day that they’re very happy in Broadmoor—it’s quite like a high-class club.”

“Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.”

“He would say so,” I remarked bitterly. “Modesty is certainly not his middle name.” “I wish you wouldn’t be so horribly American, James.

  • If You Liked This Then You May Like...
Hangman's Holiday by Dorothy L Sayers
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
One by One by Ruth Ware

  • About the Author...

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie
 is the best-selling author of all time. She wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in Romance. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author, having been translated into at least 103 languages. She is the creator of two of the most enduring figures in crime literature-Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple-and author of The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theatre.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, England, U.K., as the youngest of three. The Millers had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha.

Before marrying and starting a family in London, she had served in a Devon hospital during the First World War, tending to troops coming back from the trenches. During the First World War, she worked at a hospital as a nurse; later working at a hospital pharmacy, a job that influenced her work, as many of the murders in her books are carried out with poison. During the Second World War, she worked as a pharmacy assistant at University College Hospital, London, acquiring a good knowledge of poisons which feature in many of her novels.

Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, came out in 1920. During her first marriage, Agatha published six novels, a collection of short stories, and a number of short stories in magazines.

In late 1926, Agatha's husband, Archie, revealed that he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. On 8 December 1926 the couple quarreled, and Archie Christie left their house, Styles, in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress at Godalming, Surrey. That same evening Agatha disappeared from her home, leaving behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused an outcry from the public, many of whom were admirers of her novels. Despite a massive manhunt, she was not found for eleven days.

In 1930, Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan (Sir Max from 1968) after joining him in an archaeological dig. Their marriage was especially happy in the early years and remained so until Christie's death in 1976.

Christie frequently used familiar settings for her stories. Christie's travels with Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in and around Torquay, where she was born. Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Christie's room as a memorial to the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by the couple as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.

Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. She based at least two of her stories on the hall: the short story The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, and the novel After the Funeral. Abney Hall became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots.

To honour her many literary works, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 New Year Honours. The next year, she became the President of the Detection Club.
(From Goodreads.com)

2001, A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke

  You can buy 2001 A Space Odyssey.. . Here You can find out more about Arthur C Clarke... Here 228 pages The Blurb... Written when landing ...